


Gift of the Roper

by gardnerhill



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Illnesses, M/M, Marijuana, Original Character(s), Post-Quest, The Shire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:44:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5937223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A defense of medical marijuana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gift of the Roper

"Sam, it were right friendly of you to come out here to help with the harvest. We're that grateful for the help." Anson handed a mug of ale to his cousin. "After the short rations last year, it's as if this year's given us a double-harvest to make up for it!"

Briar, a round, sweet-tempered Hobbit who belied her name completely, emerged from the delicious steam in the kitchen bearing a platter, followed by their daughter Willow. "Imagine you coming all the way from Hobbiton to help us, and you so new-married! You make sure that great lummox of mine doesn't keep you here past the pining point for your sweetheart!" Sam laughed and shook his head at her.

"It's a risky time of year to travel far from home, Samwise." Anson poured cups of cider for the supper table. "Peak harvest time, and such harvests this year! Won't your own fields be wanting?"

"Everyone's busy, and there are any number of willing hands in Hobbiton," Sam said. "I was sent out here for two reasons: see how the regrowing goes in Tighfield, for one." He smiled at the laden table and tucked his napkin under his chin; the children giggled at his implied second reason.

Sam had told the truth about the first reason, certainly. The mindless hard work of bringing in the bundles of rope-hemp that day had been exactly what he'd needed, as was the company of plain Hobbit-folk. Now he ached pleasurably with the memory of good hard work, and his stomach howled.

"Well, it's good to have you here again, Samwise," Anson said, beaming. "That magic Elf-dust of yours worked a treat out here, it did." Willow and Winscot, a teen girl and a lad-child, nodded; they had seen the trees grow back faster than they ever had before, magic brought by this wonderful visitor who had traveled farther than Bree and had seen real Elves.

Tighfield had not been as badly hurt as Hobbiton and its surrounds, but some "gathering and sharing" patrols had done malicious mischief to beloved old trees, and had torched near-harvest fields after raiding the local farms. Today Sam had seen the results of his work last autumn in his cousin's lush fields and thriving young trees.

Further evidence of this marvelous year of growth and plenty lay before them now, in the platter piled with potatoes and the pitcher of rich gravy; the bowl of steamed, hard-shelled squashes; the basket of warm, fresh-baked bread; and crocks of sweet new butter.

Briar set the table's crowning glory before Sam, a great roast of pork with baked apples that smelled magnificent. "Be sure to load his plate proper, Anson. And you, Sam, be sure to eat all that's put before you!"

Sam smiled. "After the work I put in today, this is the sweetest sight I could imagine. Don't worry, Briar, I won't leave enough on my plate to feed a starling!"

She grinned. "You see that you don’t, Master Gamgee! I'd never be able to lift my head in public if I sent you back to your Rosie thinner than you came!"

Sam's fork thudded to the table, tin on wood. A black-mailed fist took his throat and squeezed it shut. Sam clapped his hands to his open mouth, but not before a sob tore out of him. He buried his face in his hands just as the tears burst out. Sharp and strong as at Bag End, grief filled him, and rage, and helplessness. He was aware of the distressed cries from the children and Briar, and was bitterly ashamed atop everything else.

Deep voice soothing his family, Anson set one big hand between Sam’s shoulders to guide him away from the table and led him, blind and stumbling, back to the room set aside for him. He lay on the bed and cried until he could control himself again.

When he raised his head, Anson was still in the room, seated on a chair and holding his pipe in his hands, fiddling with it rather than lighting it. His face was contorted with worry, but his deep voice was level. "You said two reasons, Samwise," he said steadily, "help with the harvest and visiting old relations. Unless it's something else that's reason two."

Sam gulped and nodded. "Those are the reasons I'm here. Visiting relations here, and leaving friends in Hobbiton that I can't help nohow. Can't even make the pain less –" He choked, and sat up, scrubbing fiercely at his face with his handkerchief.

"Samwise," Anson said, "tell me why you've come here."

"Didn't come," Sam said bitterly. "I was sent. I couldn't do no good. You can't help neither."

"First fight with your missus?"

"Not my missus," Sam whispered. "My master."

***

_It took a deal of coaxing, but Sam finally talked Frodo into coming out to the Ivy Bush; it was the first time Frodo had been out of Bag End since handing the mayorship back to Will Whitfoot at Midsummer. Frodo needed a bit of beer in him; anything to soften the gaunt frame and fill the hollow cheeks. Sam spent hours cooking, making all of Frodo's old favourites, but he had to coax him to take each listless bite. It was heartbreaking: the one person in the Shire who most deserved to reap the bounty of this burgeoning year was lessening every day._

_Gil Proudfoot insisted on buying the first round ("I wouldn't have no kind of ale nor beer fit to drink in my place if it weren't for your work, Master Gardener – and such beer we're brewing this year!"), and the two Hobbits settled into a high-backed booth with a half-pint each. Frodo smiled quietly at the innkeeper’s praise of Sam, and they enjoyed the mugs of splendid new beer in peace and the pleasure of each other's company. Just returned from supervising a Southfarthing harvest, Sam told Frodo how every barn and rafter was stuffed bursting-full from the incredible year of growth; none of the older Hobbits could recall its equal. Frodo in turn made Sam laugh by talking about Rose's raid on the pantry, where she'd sat on the floor and polished off an entire jar of strawberry preserves by herself, without bread nor butter to go with it. "That babe inside her must be like a fledgling, mouth open all the time," Frodo said, smiling._

_Sam grinned; his concern for Frodo could not eclipse the joy he took in his newly-wedded state, and his pleasure at the thought of a child in Bag End next year. Already he could envision a tiny towheaded Hobbit tracking mud on the tiles, leaving sticky handprints on the walls, begging an indulgent Uncle Frodo for one more story about the Elves…_

_"…hide nor hair of him since the Fair," someone growled from a nearby table. "And that gardener and his wife livin' in the place bold as you please as if they owned it a'ready!"_

_Only when Frodo put one hand on both of Sam's did Sam realise that he'd clenched his fists on the table. None looked at them. But the whisper had come from a nearby table out of their sight, presided over by the miller and his cronies. Most of the Hobbits at that table had been Ted Sandyman's fellow collaborators during the Troubles. It was clear from Gil's dark look that they were not welcome visitors, and they were only permitted in because Mr. Baggins didn't want no bad feelings left over from the terrible year._

_"My Lily hears them at the market," Sandyman said. "Everyone talks about the scandal of that Gamgee pair, as fat a brace of Hobbits as any others this year, and Baggins wasted to nothing. There's a reason, I'm saying." The malice in his voice made it clear that it was no good reason._

_"I heard Mr. Baggins took sick in the world outside," Noll Harrower said. "Least, that's what Samwise told me at the Fair. He was bad hurt, and he took sick from it, and that's what ails him now."_

_"Oh, Sam says and it's so, is it?" Ted sneered. "All that Gamgee talk belongs in his compost heap. Black Riders! Monsters! It's all fairy tales and Took-talk for children and fools still looking for Mad Baggins' dragon treasure. Hides what Sam and his wife are up to, eh?"_

_"Well, speak on, Ted," Billian Bracegirdle said._

_Aye, Ted, speak on, Sam thought. The light darkened to a dull red, with the smirking miller at its center. He barely felt the hand squeezing his; he knew Frodo whispered something to him but his attention was elsewhere ._

_"It all falls together," Ted said. "There's always been talk about Frodo's queer doings concerning that Gamgee lad. Both Bagginses had the gardeners into the house like they was Brandybuck relations and all. And with no natural heirs of his own, I’ll wager the soft-headed fool's left Bag End to that dung-shoveler out of sentimentality."_

_Frodo's hand tensed on Sam's for a split-second. Sam shot a look at Frodo, but there was no expression on his face._

_"Frodo Baggins always was a weakling – he'd be no match against that half-wit bullock Sam, or even that farm-wench he wed." Cruel laughter from the table's denizens. Ted slapped both open palms on the wooden table. "So! Riddle solved. Gamgee takes a wife, the two of them Lockhole Baggins in his own rooms and starve him to death neat as you please. The girl probably learned that trick from Sharkey and told Sam about it. No doubt we'll hear news from Bag End any day now, and the two of them will show up for the will-reading all red-eyed and weeping over 'poor Mr. Baggins' mysterious illness'–"_

_A bench scraped back with a screech that drew every eye in the place. Malicious Hobbit faces lost their grins as they saw who was there and had heard every word._

_Somewhere deep in Sam – somewhere under the blood-lust surging through him – was a poisonous joy at seeing Ted's smirking face go pale with terror. He raised his walking stick over his head, and words roared out of his mouth – words whose meaning he did not know-- which Gimli had always shouted as he ran at an enemy._

_Ted's cronies scattered like Orcs under a noon Sun. Ted's panicked eyes darted from side to side, looking for allies, and saw only the unfriendly faces of Hobbits who remembered which side Ted had been on last year. "Five pennies says t' gard'ner blacks_ both _'is eyes," one fellow drawled to his friend._

_Only one thing kept Ted Sandyman from leaving the Bush beaten bloody: two thin, pale hands wrapped around Sam’s thick brown wrists. Frodo's voice was thin and angry. "Not on my account, Sam! I won't have it!"_

_"Now it's Rosie he's slandering with that filthy tongue! I should rip it out of his head!" Sam shouted back. Long months of exhaustive toil and constant worry for his master boiled to the surface. Once again Sharkey lay sprawled before him on the ground and Sting was in his hand, eager to find a purchase in the brute who had attacked someone he loved._

_And once again it was Frodo who halted the murderous intent knotting Sam's muscles. "Sam, they're words, only words! If you lay hand or stick to him the Troubles start all over again, and this time it won't be Saruman nor Wormtongue to foul the Shire, but Hobbits alone!"_

_"Starving you!_ Starving you _!" The words splintered past Sam's clenched teeth, tears of rage fleeing his wide-open eyes. "When I'd slit open my heart and pour every drop of blood out for you to drink if it would give you back what's rightly yours – your health, your appetite, your...your peace..." He shook, gulped. "Your life," he said thickly._

_"I know. I know, Sam."_

_"No pain. Oh, no more pain," Sam wept. "I'd die if it meant you wouldn't be in pain no more."_

_"I know, dearest one. Oh, I know."_

_Frodo held him close and comforted him. Neither noticed when Ted Sandyman fled the Bush; nor did they pay heed to the disappointed mutters of the other patrons as they returned to their splendid beer, or the few worried looks they did get from Gil and others._

_They returned to Bag End in silence, Sam still shaking with rage. Frodo was ill that night, and vomited the little he'd eaten and drunk; Sam spent the rest of the night cursing himself for adding to Frodo's misery._

_The very next morning Rose all but ordered a silent Sam to see how his Tighfield relations fared, and not to return for at least a week, though two would be better. "You've been worked hard as was your poor old Bill in Bree. You'll do the Shire no good if you don't rest and take a bit of time for yourself." Meaning: Go somewhere far away to cool off, and don't come back until you can keep your anger from hurting other people in this household._

_He bade good-bye to Frodo, who sat by the fire wrapped in a shawl like an old gaffer. Indeed, Sam's old Gaffer was more hale and hearty than this hollow-eyed wraith, and Sam cursed himself afresh. But Frodo nodded at Sam, smiling with his lips only._

_As Bill pulled the small cart through the market, Sam looked at the chattering women tending the stalls, but his usual peaceful pleasure at seeing the brisk business of the day was spoilt._ Was it you? Were you one of the gossips? Did you repeat those filthy lies?

***

"Your master," Anson said. "You'd said he'd come back all quiet and pale after being so ill in them foreign lands. He's not gettin' no better, is he?"

"Worse every day," Sam said thickly, the tears flowing again down their accustomed channels. "It hurts him, you can tell, even when he says he's fine. Fine! That word's a lie on his lips! And thin, Anson, thin as an Elf and growing thinner every day."

"Thin, you say," Anson said, stroking his chin. "And in pain."

"Can't even stop the pain proper," Sam said, gulping into his kerchief. "Willowbark doesn't touch it. He hates how heavy and sleepy poppy makes him; his dreams get even worse and he can't wake up as readily, and he gets up more tired than when he went to bed." He hung his head. "He tried, once, to drink the pain into silence, and I…I let him do it. Oh, that near killed him. It took Rosie and me three days of nursing before we knew if he'd ever wake up again, and that near killed me. He was sick for a week after that, couldn't even keep water down. We nearly lost him, all for me being a fool.

"He's dying, Anson," Sam said into the kerchief he gripped in both fists, his throat seizing up again. "I keep saying he's getting better every day, but it's worse. That foul thing's eaten up too much of him. He's a wheat-husk, empty inside, even if he looks the same on the outside."

Sam didn't tell Anson about the dark thoughts on the worst nights, when a vision of relief would rise up before Sam like the Ring's spell. _End his pain_ , it crooned to him, _take Sting from the storage chest, end his terrible pain once and for all – then turn the point into your own heart and go with him._ A vision alone it remained; he was heartbroken, not foolish. Too many threads bound him to this world still: Rosie, and the babe she bore, and his Gaffer, and the still-wounded Shire needing his gardener's hands. They would all be made bereft if he succumbed to that dark dream, whether he slew himself to follow his master or turned himself over to the Shirriffs and the Lockholes with a broken heart. No, he must stand aside and watch, helpless, as Frodo died a crueller, slower death than the Cirith Ungol Orcs would have given him.

Sam stared at the warm brown hand covering both his knotted fists. He looked up at his cousin.

Anson's eyes were wet. But they met his with a steady gaze. His other hand still held the pipe. "Samwise, we do have something that'll help your Mr. Frodo. Come with me."

***

Anson opened the small cask and showed Sam the thin, grey, sweet-smelling sawtooth leaves, each one shaped like an open hand. "Ropeweed," he said. "Last cask we was able to hide from the gatherers and sharers last year."

"Ropeweed?" Sam shook his head, confused. Ropeweed was a Tighfield crop grown as an occasional additive to pipeweed; it wasn't used in Hobbiton, nor Buckland nor Tuckborough. "Anson, that leaf gave me a headache the one time I tried it." Sam never had liked the sickly-sweet smell of the smoke.

"Not mixed with pipeweed, Sam. Ropeweed on its own. Smoked, or even ground up and added to his food."

"That last won't do," Sam said grimly, listening despite himself. "He ain't eating enough nowadays for that to do any good. How will smoking a pipe make him better?"

"It won't cure him," Anson said. "That's not what ropeweed's for. The healers here use it for folks who are sickening to death, dying of the wasting-inside, when there's nowt to do for them but make the pain less. We gave it to Gammer Withy when she got the wasting toward the end. Made her a deal more comfortable.

"Ropeweed don’t cure them of their sickness, but it makes them happy and peaceful inside. They get silly-drunk, like – not angry or spoiling for a fight like some are with too much ale in them. They can't take harm from indulging overmuch, the way you can with ale or poppy – you can smoke a whole pouch of ropeweed and not take ill from it. It's not as strong as poppy, but they don't get poppy-craving afterward. They sleep deep as a drunken Took, but there's no morning-after head with ropeweed.

"And there's something else about it." Anson smiled and patted Sam's hands. "It'll quiet those vipers’ tongues saying you and your Rose are starving your master. Ropeweed makes you powerful hungry, like children coming in to supper after playing hard all afternoon. Dying folks thinning down to nothing smoke it or eat it, and between it blunting the pain and sharpening their stomachs they eat better and stay happier longer. It's sweets they crave, and rich foods – just what Mr. Frodo needs to refill himself."

Appetite. Peace. Relief from pain.

For the first time since October 6, Sam dared to hope.

"It might help. Anson, could I?" He reached a hand in to take a few leaves.

But Anson pushed Sam's hand aside, firmly set the barrel lid back into place, and pushed the entire cask toward Sam. "Take this home with you, when you go." He smiled gently and put a rough hand on Sam's shoulder. "Stay your visit. Your missus is right, Samwise. You won't help your Mr. Frodo by working and worrying yourself till you're near as ill as he. Finish out your visit, and bring that home when you're ready and not before. A fortnight she said, and a fortnight it'll be." Anson flashed his ugly, friendly grin. "I don't know your Rosie, but I know my Briar, and I'd rather face the ruffians again than gainsay the word of the house-mistress!"

After that, the time in Tighfield passed easier for Sam. The plain mindless exertion of harvest was a blessed relief. He had not realised just how exhausted he was from his care of Frodo on top of the nonstop work of healing the wounded Shire. Now that he carried a barrel of hope home with him, he was able to turn his attention to his own refreshment. He worked hard, and ate and slept as well as a hired hand. He travelled about Tighfield, and blessed the sight of flourishing saplings, shimmering fields, and round, cheerful Hobbits bringing in the harvest. This was his land the villains had laid brute hands upon, stripped naked, soiled and abused. To see her reclothed so royally and her wounds healed so spectacularly healed a part of him too. Hope rose inside him. _If all the Shire is doing so well after being so poorly done by, surely he can come back to himself too, after the cruel time he's had of it._

It was a good time, but he was ready to leave at fortnight's end; he ached to hold his lass in his arms once again, and to see how Frodo fared. He gathered his belongings and brought them out to the small cart. Anson had already loaded the small barrel into the back.

Sam hugged them all good-bye, Anson last. He looked at the cask. "This is your last barrel. What do I owe–?"

"Samwise Gamgee, if you touch your purse we're no longer family!" Briar emphasized the words by pushing a covered basket on Sam. It was full of her apple rolls.

***

"It smells nasty," Frodo snapped. "Sam, I wish you wouldn't bother so. If Gandalf and the King were unable to heal me completely, I hardly think you'll find a cure out by your cousin's farm. We sent you away to rest, not to worry about me."

Frodo's peevishness cheered Sam rather than the reverse; Frodo quiet and meek was Frodo deathly ill. His visit had indeed done him good. "It's supposed to work a treat on people in pain," he said calmly, filling a pipe. "And it's not like poppy."

"It smells foul enough to be medicinal in nature," Frodo grumbled, and took the lit pipe.

Sam remembered his cousin's simple instructions. "Now you don't just puff, Mr. Frodo. You pull the smoke in and suck in some air and hold your breath a little, for about the count of five, and then let it all go."

Frodo took a puff and made a face at the smell. But he did as Sam bid, holding his breath before exhaling the smoke. Nothing seemed to happen. The smoke was as cloying-sweet as Sam remembered, though the breeze wafted it away from the Hill well enough.

Sam sat beside Frodo on the bench, looking down at the golden blossoms amid the silvery-green leaves of the _mallorn_ in the Party Field. A gift of the Lorien earth from the Lady had blessed the Shire. If only a gift of the Tighfield earth from a roper could do something for Frodo.

Frodo set the pipe down on the bench with a thump that made Sam start. "I'm going to go read something," Frodo said, a bit loudly. "You can finish the pipe, it's not doing anything for me." He gave Sam a thump on the shoulder, stood up, and went back inside.

Rubbing his shoulder, Sam stared after Frodo. He carefully tapped out the half-finished pipe and ground out the embers before going back inside.

He went to Frodo's room to return the pipe, and found him sitting on the floor before his bookcase, eyes roaming over the different-coloured bindings. "Have you found something to read yet?" Sam asked, setting the pipe on its stand at the dressing-table.

"Not yet," Frodo said absently, one hand reaching up to brush at a dangling ribbon bookmark. "They're all so pretty, I don't know where to start." He smiled and batted at the ribbon again. He dropped his head and shook it, and looked up at the books again.

Then Frodo did something he hadn't done in months. He started to laugh. He laughed as merrily as a lad drunk or in love for the first time, and the sound was a water freshet tumbling in Sam's ears.

Sam gripped the table, not wanting to react and make the magical sound go away. He closed his eyes and let the tears fall – the first he had shed for joy since his wedding, months before.

Silly-drunk, Anson had said. That's exactly how Frodo sounded – like the gleeful dancer who had pushed him into Rosie's arms at Bilbo's party.

Silly-drunk, he'd said. And hungry.

Sam kissed Frodo's head and left him to be amused by the colours of his bookcase. He went into the kitchen and opened the flour bin. Scones would be quick to make, and there were a good number of preserves, new harvest apples and clotted cream. It was nearly time for tea at any rate, and supper was cooking nicely.

Sam was mixing a second batch of scones when Frodo left his room. A plate and a cup of creamy tea awaited him on the kitchen table.

"Oh, Sam, they smell wonderful." Frodo picked up a warm scone, dragged it through the jam pot and took a huge bite even before he sat down. "Sorry," he mumbled with his mouth full, a splotch of bramble jam on his shirt. "They just smelled so good, and I'd forgotten what it was like to be so hungry."

Frodo proceeded to finish half the scones, licking the jam and clotted cream from his fingers like a greedy child who'd been playing hard all afternoon. Licking his fingers! And Frodo eating more at that one setting than Sam had seen him eat in a week!

Just when Sam thought he couldn't be any happier, Rosie came back from her trip to the market, exclaimed in joy at the twin sights of Frodo eating and Sam baking, and promptly sat beside Frodo, without bothering to put away her purchases, to polish off the rest of the scones and cream. "I'm fairly sure _I'm_ not pregnant," Frodo said, waving a half-eaten apple at her. Both giggled.

At supper Frodo finished his small plate of rich beef and mushroom stew in minutes. Sam refilled it even as he began to ask for a second helping. Briar's apple rolls and custard followed, and the table's occupants set to, still laughing. Between a ravenous, pregnant Rosie and a ravenous, weed-addled Frodo, Sam was lucky to keep two rolls back for himself.

Sam waited in fear through the night, but heard no sounds of illness from Frodo's room; the bucket left near Frodo's head was still empty in the morning. Sam and Rose ate first breakfast alone, but the sweet smoke smell came from Frodo's room to join them, and the sound of Frodo laughing. Frodo emerged from his room for second breakfast, smiling, his eyes red-rimmed as if he'd been up all night. He took half the bacon off the platter. "I wonder if pigs know how good they taste," he said, and giggled at the thought. Sam slipped three eggs scrambled with cheese, cream, and mushrooms onto Frodo's plate, and watched them vanish in seconds.

Sam chewed his own bacon without noticing it at all; he watched Frodo eat the way he would watch Elves dance, and tallied up what he would send to Anson. Cuttings from the orchard, cherry and almond and pear; five coins from the gold Bilbo had given him; a beef steer for Yule, two sacks of his Gaffer's best taters…

Frodo yawned prodigiously, stretching both arms out. "I'll be…I'll be…" he said, and blinked. "I'll be in… in…my room. Um. Sleeping." He rose, stumbling a little.

Sam watched him leave. "Sweet dreams, Mr. Frodo."

###

Frodo took a pipe in the morning and another mid-afternoon. He slept heavily, making up for weeks and months of sleep shorted by his nightmares. When Sam asked about his dreams, Frodo waved a vague hand and said, "Oh, all sorts of dark, foul things chasing me. But they're as slow as I am, and they don't frighten me; I just go back to sleep when the dreams are over." Frodo's reddened eyes were a welcome sight after the dark, hollow circles under pained eyes. He appeared at the table for every meal, and if he was slow and sleepy and his talk the inane babble of a drunken lad, Sam blessed it all, for it was accompanied by a healthy Hobbit's penchant for putting away victuals. His cheeks and ribs filled in, and if he never grew to a proper Hobbitty roundness it was not for want of appetite.

Another appetite resurfaced with the return of better sleep and hunger sated. One evening, not long before Yule, Sam went into Frodo's room to see if he needed help getting ready for his bath, and got a kiss on the mouth for his trouble. "Mm, Sam, I've missed our games," Frodo murmured, giggling a little as he tried to get a hand into Sam's shirt.

Sam gently pulled Frodo's hand away and held it in both of his, looking Frodo in the eye. He refused to believe this was a deliberate act of malice against his wife, but he was worried about Frodo's memory. "I remember our games, Mr. Frodo, when we were young. They're sweet memories. But we're both of us adults now, and I'm married with a babe on the way." His heart twisting at the look on Frodo's face, Sam turned his hand over and kissed it. "You know how I love you. But I won't hurt Rosie for the world, and this would break her heart."

Frodo nodded, and squeezed Sam’s hands. "You're right, Sam. I'm– I'm afraid your old Mr. Frodo is being an ass tonight." He mustered a smile.

"Tis the nature of the herb, so my cousin says," Sam replied calmly. "He called it 'silly-drunk.' I know better than to heed a drunken Hobbit, or I'd have been on that table barking like a dog at Master Pippin's request."

"I remember that night!" Frodo said, giggling a bit as his good humour returned. "Oh, it was Pippin's birthday, wasn't it? Merry'd gotten him _very_ drunk and the two of them sang 'On Monday Night,' and Pippin sang the part for the lass."

"He did indeed, Mr. Frodo. Sang it very well, as I recall. Everyone stopped laughing, except where the song called for it."

"And then he sang 'As I Walked Out' and made everyone weep to listen to him. And you said you wanted Pip to sing that on your wedding day, and Pip said, 'I'll do it if you hop on this table and bark like a dog, Sam.' Oh, I was so angry at him for saying that to you!"

"But I was ahead of you, for I didn't want you to scold your cousin before everyone in the Dragon, as if he was a wean."

"You handled it beautifully, Sam. 'Now, Master Pippin, you've proved you've had too much, for you'd never ask me such a thing otherwise. You may be the Thain's son but I won't have your sauce, young man.' And he climbed down and kissed you, and apologised very sweetly."

"He apologised even better by singing that lovely tune at our wedding."

Frodo pulled Sam close and kissed his cheek. "And I apologise now, Sam. I promise I won't do anything again that could hurt Rosie or you."

Sam cupped Frodo's cheek in his hand and kissed him back. "Nothing to forgive, sir. But it's good to see that your hearthfire is still alight! When you're better, you should think of turning your heart toward a wife of your own, and children to fill this smial. I can only wish you and the lass you choose for our Mistress Baggins the same joy my Rosie has given to me. How I'd love to play pick-a-back with your own little 'uns, and tell 'em the stories you told me as a lad!"

"A family," Frodo said. "A family to fill this smial. Yes. That's what would make me happy, Sam." He proved it by giggling some more. "It's quite all right, Sam," he said between giggle fits. "I couldn't have tumbled with you anyway. This– this– this pipe...stuff, it's like being drunk in the way it affects you. That way." That only seemed to make Frodo laugh more. "Oh, _what_ an ass I am tonight!"

Sam shook his head, letting the words pass without comment. "There's another thing I came for, Mr. Frodo, before I was distracted. Before you have your bath, come outside, just for a little bit. You mustn't miss it."

The ground was still bare of snow, but the air was cold and crisp as an apple. Hobbiton was bathed in silver light. The Moon was round and full, and it very nearly blazed, it was so bright. Frodo and Sam stood just outside the door of Bag End, wrapped in their soft grey Elf-cloaks, their faces turned to the light.

"I'm glad you showed me this, Sam," Frodo said with a little laugh. "Oh, look at him! What beautiful light! How close it seems!"

"It does at that, Frodo." Sam hugged Frodo close. "All we need's a long enough ladder, seemingly."

"Well, I think I shall indeed go to the Moon this time," Frodo said, and set out for a walk. "Come, Sam, you promised! You said you'd follow me if I went to the Moon!"

Sam tugged at Frodo's hood to pull him back to the flags, laughing at him. "Now that's ropeweed talking and not you, sir."

"Oh, I know. How light I feel inside! What splendid stuff it is!" Frodo leant back against the dry winter grass of the Hill, still gazing at the Moon. "West of the Moon, then," he said. "Sam, if you won't follow me _to_ the Moon, then promise you'll follow me west of the Moon and east of the Sun."

"I promise," Sam said, as to a chattering four-year-old. "Come in for your bath before you take a chill."

###

Sam's vast relief at Frodo's improved spirits and appetite translated into more work around Bag End and longer travels around Hobbiton to monitor the new trees. Because of this, and his anticipation of Rose's pregnancy coming to its end with March, winter was nearly over before Sam realised what else had changed.

The signs had been there for some time. He had gone into the study with fresh logs one Foreyule day, only to find those he'd laid there days before unburnt, and the wood-basket full.

Turning to see if there were any other chores he could do in the room, Sam saw Bilbo’s big red book laid open on the writing-desk, one page half full of Frodo's flowing script. The final paragraph read: "At that moment, more full of love for my homeland than I had ever felt before, I stood before the Council. 'I will take the Ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way.’"

 _He's adding our own part of the tale to Bilbo's book._ Sam turned and left the study.

When he re-entered the study a week later upon the same errand, the same final paragraph met his eye. He brushed a small cobweb from the quill pen in its bottle of ink. A month later, Sam read the same final paragraph on the same open page. A few odd bits of paper lay strewn on the desk, most covered in squiggles or sketches of flowers.

Two months later, when he returned to cover the furniture in preparation for the chimney-sweep to do his work, he entered the study and saw that same ending paragraph. He looked from the lamp, which he had not had to refill , to the cobwebby logs and sticks in the basket.

"Would you like me to tidy up the study for you, Mr. Frodo?" he asked that afternoon at tea. Rosie was napping; the restless babe growing within her spoiled her night sleep more and more these days.

Frodo blinked his reddened eyes and looked to Sam. "No, Sam, 's all right," he said in the drunken slur that had marred his speech since Sam's return from Tighfield. "Work's in there, waiting for me. Book. Got to finish the Book."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but that book ain't been writ on all winter, if I'm any judge."

Frodo nodded and smiled. "I know. Feels better this way. Hurts to write the Book. Hurts to think about it. Pipe makes it all go away."

Frodo had loved writing, had often had to be coaxed out of his study and away from his books and papers to take a meal. He wasn't even reading these days. Silly-drunk – and that meant also that the smoker became as lazy and useless as a drunkard. Sam, whose first instinct was not to abide laziness nor uselessness in anyone, angrily told himself that Frodo was not well, for all that he had much improved on the outside. The lethargy of the weed was a blessing if it numbed the pain and fought off the nightmares, kept away the hollow-eyed, unsmiling wraith that was not his Frodo. But this careless giggling fool was not his Frodo, either.

"Perhaps you shouldn't try to write it down then, if it hurts you so." He could put the book away, tidy the study up properly.

"No no no, Sam. Promised Bilbo. Have to write it all down. Let others see what we did."

Others – who were free and alive only because of the deed done by the Hobbit they muttered about and avoided. The story, set down in a book, would make them listen, perhaps even respect and honour Frodo as they should.

"I'll help you any way I can with that, sir."

"Later, Sam, later." Frodo waved a dismissive hand and nearly upset the salt-cellar. "You've something else to think about these days."

***

One late night in mid-April, while walking his crying babe through the halls, Sam heard Frodo's voice. Wondering if he had taken to smoking a pipe at midnight, Sam headed to Frodo's room. But the sound and the light were not in Frodo's room; they were in the study, and the cloying sweet smell of ropeweed was missing. Sam peered in through the open door.

Frodo sat at the study desk, murmuring words under his breath, his pen scratching on the page. Sam could see the rigid line of his back, his clenched fist atop the desk. The glass inkpot made a soft clinking noise as he dunked the quill, and he scratched across the paper again.

Elanor whined loudly at the loss of the jogging movement.

"Sam, please take her away," Frodo said without turning around to face them. His voice was level and courteous, and there was no slurring in his speech.

"I'll do that, sir," Sam said, and jogged the baby back into a quieter state, walking down the corridor. "Hush, Ellyelle, everything's all right."

Frodo appeared at first breakfast that morning; he looked tired and drawn, and the only red in his eyes was that of sleeplessness. "Did you sleep at all, Mr. Frodo?" Sam asked, yawning himself.

"I slept," Frodo said. "Just porridge, thank you."

Sam did not say anything when the bowl was left half-finished; he only poured more tea.

###

Now it was the ropeweed barrel that began to look neglected. Sam kept the study well-filled with firewood and fresh candles; Frodo’s meals came back untouched, or nearly so.

The Red Book became filled with Frodo's firm, flowing script. Elanor grew round and fat, and began to smile.

Frodo's smile all but vanished. His eyes hollowed; his cheeks and ribs sank in again.

Nearly every time Sam walked the baby at night, the light burned in the study and the pen scratched.

"Mr. Frodo, you look hagridden," he whispered to the bowed, skinny back from the doorway, Elanor drowsing on his shoulder. "Take a pipe and rest your mind."

"I mustn't," Frodo said without turning around. He sounded as flat and tired as he had before Sam's trip to Tighfield. "This has to be done."

"But surely there's no rush? Has the King commanded you to finish this history in a certain time?"

"No. My flesh has."

Frodo lifted his head and turned to look Sam in the eye. Elanor stirred in her sleep on Sam's shoulder, and that was the only movement. Sam's eyes filled.

Frodo did not try to smile. "I am grateful for the respite you brought me. You always seem to know what I need, Sam. But I was given a warning, not long ago. This requires my attention now. I do not know how much time I have left, but I know it is not much. I cannot afford to waste it in drunken dreams and pipe smoke. The sooner this is done, the sooner I can truly rest."

Frodo turned back to the book.

Sam walked Elanor back to her cot. He tilted his head a little to spill the tears out of his eyes so he wouldn't stumble and wake the baby.

***

Elanor's six-month-day neared. The Red Book lay fat and full of words. Frodo did take a pipe to celebrate; it brought him heavy sleep and a bit of appetite, but no laughter.

Only enough remained in the barrel for one good pipeful. "Save it for your birthday," Sam suggested.

Frodo looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "Can Rose spare you for a fortnight?"

***

Sam plodded home, and laughed bitterly at the date: October 6. There would be no more need to dread that date.

The legal papers left at Brandy Hall and Tuckborough, as well as at Michel Delving and in the safe-box in Bag End, told the truth of Frodo's words on the road – and Ted Sandyman's sneering accusation in the Bush. Sam and Rosie hadn't starved Frodo to death for his house, but the house was theirs nonetheless, and Frodo was gone forever. He might as well be dead. Now Samwise Gamgee must learn how to live in a Shire that had no Frodo in it.

At first he couldn't. Sam took to his bed after supper that first night back, and didn't rise for two weeks; he slept, drank a little water, took a mouthful of broth once in a while, but mostly just lay and stared at the wall.

A voice in his head that sounded much like his Gaffer's chided him for his slug-a-bed ways, and for moping and feeling sorry for himself when there was so much work to be done; it reminded him of those who had lost dearer than friends in this War, and castigated him for thinking his grief worse than that of Frodo's cousins.

None of it worked. How could he go out and enjoy a Shire denied to the best Hobbit who had ever lived? What was the point of all his hard work and toil to make it a beautiful home once again, when the one for whom he'd toiled was gone?

_He's right. He's right, what he moaned one night in his fever. We should have died on the Mountain when It was gone. We'd have been together at the least._

But even his grief was no match for his solid, stolid sense of duty. Weather and seasons and crops would not stay their natural courses any more than they had when Hamfast Gamgee went back to his scythe still red-eyed from burying Sam's mother. So he rose, finally, and went back to his work with no pride and no joy in it.

He supervised harvests and inspected strong young saplings and arbitrated disputes among neighbouring Hobbits who still bore bitter feelings from the year of Troubles. Back in Bag End, he shelved papers and books and studied accounts and rent-ledgers, and gradually understood that the Master for whom he did this work now was himself.

He bought a round of fourteen-twenty at the Ivy Bush for Bill Noakes and Tom Cotton and his Gaffer, and took their acclaim of his new wealth the way he would take a dose of bitterroot. When the miller turned from his own table, clearly ready to make some comment about the source of Sam's fortune, Sam met Ted Sandyman's eyes and said, "One word, Ted, only one from you, and I'll see you on the Party Field tomorrow." When Tom Cotton loudly mentioned that Ted still owed his rent to his new landlord, Sandyman remembered a prior errand and departed, and Sam was vaguely disappointed that a violent conflict had been thwarted. Sam gave his own pint to Bill to finish.

He left most of Bag End to Rose, who began to transform the great hole from a bachelor's suite into a proper home for a big bustling hobbit family, packing up exotic breakables and readying a small room to be Elanor's nursery in anticipation of the next babe to grace their lives.

Two rooms she left to Sam: the study he vowed would stay untouched; the other needed dealing with.

One day in early November Sam finally mustered his strength and walked into the room. He felt pierced to the heart at the sight of the beautifully-carved wall-press, Frodo's clothes, his books, his mathoms and keepsakes from his life in the Shire. The curtains Sam had drawn back of a sunny morning with a cheery greeting to the rumpled figure in the bed; the bed itself he had briefly shared as a tween with its owner, bittersweet memories now. Everything was as it had been the day of their departure for the Havens; Frodo had taken nothing with him across the Sea but Sam's love. But Sam was a Gamgee, and that pragmatic Hobbit inside him said bluntly that yes, it was very sad that Mr. Frodo wasn't never coming back, but that this was a perfectly fine room that mustn't go to waste, and Mr Frodo's cousins and friends would appreciate the keepsakes, and the clothes and oddments would be welcome among those who'd lost near everything in the Troubles.

Keeping for himself only Frodo's favourite pipe, a gift from Bilbo, Sam set about sorting out everything else. Rose did not offer to help him; she did not comment on the long afternoons when he would emerge for tea, silent and worn from weeping, and pick at his food.

On the fourth day in the room, Sam finally opened the chest at the foot of the bed and found the barrel. A fat lot of good it had done Frodo. But Frodo had lived long enough to go away with the Elves, and surely that was a better fate than the one Sam's despairing mind had suggested before his trip to Tighfield. The ropeweed had made Frodo laugh; had made him hungry; had given him peace, if only for a time.

Sam poked the few remaining dried leaves with one finger. When was the last time he had laughed, or taken joy in anything? Elanor's birth, perhaps. The little food he ate tasted of ashes. He hadn't lain with Rose since before the birth, and any desire he'd felt since had burnt to ashes too. Rose was worried about him, some distant part of him knew, but knowing it and caring about it were two different things. He wasn't going to die of grief, for all that he wished he could; he had too much work to do, too many responsibilities. He'd best put this barrel with other things to hand back or give to people.

Best to get rid of those last few shreds of ropeweed, even if it made him sick as it had in his tweens; a headache or a sick stomach would be a welcome diversion.

He took up Frodo's pipe.

***

Inhale, hold it in, feel the cloying sweetness swirl around inside, exhale. Inhale.

He lay on the bed to keep steady. It wasn't like getting drunk. He got wobbly when he drank, as Frodo had laughingly told him more than once. Now he only got stiller, as silent as ever. He faced the window, looking out, not moving.

There lay the patch of garden he'd loved best to work, just outside Frodo's window. There, the rolling green hills of the Shire Frodo had destroyed himself to save. Beyond, the sandhills and flats to the West, toward the Havens.

There were the Havens, before his eyes. Gulls cried, and the waves boomed around empty ships, and silent Cirdan kept his vigil.

There, the Sea, a great rolling stretch of water all around him, before him, behind him. He glided over it as rapidly as a gull himself.

A dazzling curtain of silver, sweet and beautiful as spring rain. He moved through it.

A beautiful, far green country; white shores that dazzled the eye. A swan-prowed ship at the shore. Tall beings, fair of face and form, gathered in a group around those leaving the ship. Tall figures, and small figures.

Frodo. Still in his Elf-cloak, wearing the clothes he had worn on his last trip in Middle-earth, his face worn and tired and his eyes hollow. Bilbo, ancient and sleepy, rousing with a start at the song that surrounded him and Frodo.

Elves, familiar as Elrond and Galadriel, unfamiliar as those who gathered on the shore to greet the newcomers. Cries of joy and welcome for the Elves aboard the ship, and for Mithrandir; reverent tones of address for the two small Ring-bearers.

Frodo stayed close to Galadriel, blinking, his head bowed with weariness. The Lady's hand rested in his dark curls, a caress.

The Lady herself, her ancient beautiful eyes looking right at him, seemingly. She smiled at him as she had in Lorien, and at the Havens.

His awe was subsumed by one need, spoken from his mind and his heart.

_Lady, watch over him for me._

A promise in her eyes. Her voice in his heart, as in Lorien.

_Ring-bearer and Bearer of the Ring-bearer, Hope-Yet-Remains, my faithful Gardener. This I have done; this I will do._

Frodo's head lifted a little, as if he were about to turn and look in Sam's direction. If he looked in those eyes, he would be lost, never able to return…

Away, away back across the sea, through the curtain and across the billows, to the shore, back over the sands until sandhills became grass- and tree-covered hills, the Party Field, the Hill. Back, faster than an Eagle's flight.

But not too fast to outstrip the Lady's last words in his heart.

***

He lay in the bed, the pipe in his hand still. He blinked at the warm Sun coming in through the window, looked past the fine Dwarf-made clock on the side-table that read four-twenty, stared down into the empty bowl of the pipe.

It was a pipe-dream only. Surely only that, telling him what he wanted to hear, showing what he wanted to see. Telling him that the last promise of the Lady as he fled –

– _and if the Ring burdens your heart too at the last, go to the Havens, and there a ship will await you to carry you here_ –

– was only his own wish and dream.

But...if it were a pipe-dream only, why hadn't he pictured Frodo happier, better-rested? Why imagine him so travel-worn, as if he'd just finished a very long journey while not in the best of health? Why would his pipe-vision be so real?

And if it were only the vision of a weed-addled fool, why was the thorn gone from his heart?

He looked around at Frodo's room, Frodo's things. His sorrow was still there. But the pain was easier to bear, no longer the sharp blade of grief.

This could be Frodo's room again. For had he not vowed to name their first son Frodo? There would be another Frodo in the Shire, a Frodo who would live a long, happy life here, and only know about dark and evil things from his namesake's stories in the Red Book.

He blinked. His heart was lighter. He sat up in bed, and his stomach rumbled loudly for the first time in weeks.

He arose and washed his face. He went into the kitchen and started tea. Then he went outside, where Rose hung nappies out to dry in the warm autumn afternoon. Elanor kicked and fussed in her basket nearby.

He took his wife around the waist from behind, making her cry out a little in startlement, and kissed her. The Westering Sun blessed them both with her warmth

He looked into her eyes. "I'm back," he said, and this time he spoke the truth.

Appetite. Peace. Relief from pain. The barrel had done its work.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the late [Brownie Mary Rathbun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_Mary).


End file.
